Harvey House Company

The Harvey House business, founded by Fred Harvey in the late 19^th century, played a significant role in shaping the dining and hospitality experience for those traveling west along the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railway.

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Fred Harvey’s Story

Fred Harvey (1835-1901) was a British businessman. He emigrated from England in 1853 and got a job in a kitchen as a pot scrubber. He worked his way up in the restaurant business, eventually opening two restaurants in St. Louis in the late 1850s. But the advent of the Civil War disrupted businesses, and Harvey had to close the restaurants.

Harvey then got a job as a freight agent on the Chicago Burlington & Quincy Railroad. This job necessitated a lot of train travel. The railroad lines were extending westward, and as Harvey observed the railroad stops along the way, he saw that the eateries were often inadequate for managing train passengers. They were not well located, too small, and often unclean.

Fred Harvey saw that creating decent, clean restaurants, and eventually hotels, would improve travel and turn a profit if well-managed.

He proposed his idea for a string of restaurants along the railroad to his employer, the Chicago Burlington & Quincy line. They weren’t interested. Harvey went on to the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe Railroad and suggested a partnership. They would receive a cut for all business that resulted from the Harvey-created restaurants.

From this point on, Fred Harvey turned a profit for Harvey House and the Santa Fe. He also developed many innovative ideas that changed the travel and hospitality business everywhere.

First Restaurants

The first restaurant he opened at Santa Fe stop was a 20-seat lunchroom in Topeka, Kansas, in 1876. Within two years, he established both a hotel and restaurant in Florence, Kansas. The foundation for an empire was laid. Later he was credited with establishing the first chain restaurants.

Fred Harvey saw that the trains needed to stop to refuel and load water about every 100 miles. This would be the distance between his eateries. Cooperation between Harvey House and the railroad benefited everyone.

Established Efficiency

The restaurants simplified their menus so that diners had a choice of only two main dishes, but because Fred Harvey coordinated among all the restaurants, he made certain that the restaurant at the next stop offered two different choices. Restaurants rotated their menus every four days.

 As time went by, the railroads established an efficient system. When each train was about an hour away from a meal stop at a Harvey facility, conductors went through the cars asking who preferred to eat in the dining room and who would go to the lunch room for a quick sandwich.

At the next telegraph stop, the totals were wired ahead. That way, the kitchen knew how many meals to prepare, and the waitresses in the dining room had enough tables set to take care of the diners.

The company also relied on “train spotters.” Around the time when a train was due to pull in, a train spotter would be out on the platform. Trains could generally be seen from a few miles away. When the spotter saw the train, he rang a bell, and the kitchen and wait staff all knew it was almost time for the passengers to alight—hungry and eager to stretch their legs.

Superior Staffing

After his time as a freight agent, Fred Harvey knew the importance of good service. He’d noted that many men in jobs in these small eateries were brusque and uncaring. Harvey came up with the idea of hiring young women to manage table service.

He hired and trained carefully. The women, known as the Harvey Girls, remain part of railroad lore. To read their story, click here.

Harvey Girls could also transfer locations easily. There was continuity in the restaurant set-up and the whereabouts of supplies. If a woman worked at a Harvey House in Kansas, she would find the restaurant set-up very similar if she transferred to a Harvey House in California.

Jackets Required

Those men who chose to eat in the dining room were required to wear jackets. In the West when cowboys were sometimes traveling by train, they didn’t wear jackets and weren’t thrilled by the rule. The Harvey restaurants kept an extra supply of sport coats so customers could still dine in the restaurant and abide by the rules.

Well-to-do artists and writers who came to the La Fonda (a Harvey House property until 1969) soon helped bring the jacket rule to an end. The type of people who made up a core group in Santa Fe were well-known, and the town was very laid back. At that point, the restaurant realized the importance of pleasing the clientele, and they dropped the jacket requirement.

They also permitted the Harvey Girls to wear colorful Mexican-style skirts with white tops instead of their uniforms. These cheerful uniforms added to the atmosphere.

Women Architect Comes into Her Own

Though Harvey drew gender lines for most of the restaurant jobs (female waitress, male chefs, etc.), his headquarters employed men and women, and he soon recognized that he had someone on staff with great talent.

Mary Jane Elizabeth Colter had a staff job and started helping with the interior design work for the restaurants and hotels along the railroad line. Colter relished the beauty of the Southwest and brought the colors and feeling of the surrounding geography into the work she did for Fred Harvey.

Harvey soon started using her for exterior work including the full design of new buildings. This opened new opportunities for her, and she played off the Native American architecture. Many of the hotels and restaurants in the southwest were her design, including the Bright Angel Lodge, Desert View Watchtower, Phantom Ranch, Hopi House, Hermit’s Rest, and Lookout Studio at the Grand Canyon.

Two of the best-known hotels were also hers: The La Fonda in Santa Fe and La Posada in Winslow, Arizona. The La Fonda is now run by new owners. The La Posada closed for a time, but has been newly renovated. It is now operating as part of The Historic Hotels of America.

Built Tourism in the Southwest

As Fred Harvey’s company spread throughout the Southwest, he saw that travelers wanted to learn more about the new areas through which they were traveling. To cater to demand, he bought touring cars that he called Harvey Cars, hired drivers, and trained women to be tour guides. This part of the business was headquartered in Santa Fe.

As the touring business grew, Fred Harvey also began collecting Native American and western artifacts.

Mary Jane Colter was given the coveted job of designing a building in Winslow, Arizona, where these items could be displayed so the public could see them. As travelers flocked to see the collection, Harvey saw a new business opportunity. He established “curio” shops, where tourists could buy items large and small to take home with them.

Postcards were always popular. People wanted to send friends and family pictures of what they were seeing, and this led to a partnership between Detroit Publishing and Harvey House.

Expanded to Pullman Sleeping Cars

Both Harvey House and the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe slow-walked their way to sleeping cars. The Pullman Palace Car Company was used on several rail lines in the east and Midwest as early as 1865, but since both Harvey and AT&SF profited from the hotel and restaurant partnerships, neither business was too eager to lease Pullman cars for any of its lines.

When using a Pullman car, all railroad companies were required to charge each passenger a separate fee that went directly to Pullman. This payment covered the lease of the berth-lined railroad car as well as staffing for the sleeping car.

By 1894, passenger demands were changing. Because travelers had experienced sleeping cars in the east, they wanted sleepers on their trips west. That year the Santa Fe leased its first sleeping cars. Later, they took leases on club cars and dining cars. Most of the dining cars were managed by Harvey House. Because Harvey House had a strong reputation for great good and service. The ads for the service read “Harvey Meals All the Way.”

The Harvey House Farm

For many years, Harvey House Company was headquartered in Kansas City, Missouri. As times changed, Fred Harvey saw an opportunity for an efficient—and likely cost-saving—move to Newton, Kansas. Newton had been the center of the cattle industry, but that business was slowly gravitating to Dodge City.

Harvey knew the area well as he began leasing hotel space as early as 1882. In 1900, he re-opened the Arcade Hotel after grand renovations. It became quite a show place and an important center of town.

As the cattle industry moved on, Harvey picked up parcels of land where he intended to build his new headquarters. By this time, Harvey House was a major operation with many restaurants and hotels dotting the southwest. He knew if he could consolidate his food preparation and restaurant supplies, it would make his operation more cost-efficient.

In addition, his partnership with the Santa Fe provided him with free transportation for all goods and supplies. Harvey’s plan was to establish a working plant headquarters in Newton, Kansas. He soon had a dairy and poultry farm, and an agricultural operation to grow some produce. There was also a processing plant, and a modern steam laundry to handle much of the linen and napkins used by the restaurants.

Harvey Soda Pop

The Harvey Girls served lots of soda pop, so he built a carbonation plant for bottling his own brand of Harvey soda pop. Then in 1914, Harvey received a franchise from the Coca Cola company to bottle their products in Newton. This meant that Asa Candler, the inventor of Coca Cola, could ship only the syrup. This kept his costs down. The Coca Cola sales through Harvey outlets was a huge enterprise, and the Coca Cola company came in every 6 months to test for quality.

Shipping Fresh Food and Produce

By 1884, shipping progress was coming. The Santa Fe began using some ventilated cars for carrying fruit. They also had eight cars that were cooled by ice blocks to carry dairy and meat products. Finally, refrigerated rail cars were introduced, and this part of the business multiplied quickly. The business was known as the Santa Fe Despatch (sp). The division grew quickly as there was a growing need for all types of food that required refrigeration to be shipped by rail.

By 1918, the Fred Harvey Company ran 54 lunchrooms, 37 dining rooms, and 26 hotels. The farm in Newton that supported all this was now 500 acres with 150 employees. Record for 1921, show that the company shipped 60,000 gallons of milk; 20,000 gallons of cream; half a million pounds of poultry, and many millions of eggs and 45,000 cases of soda.

“Fly By Day. Ride the Rails at Night”

Fred Harvey and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad were also part of a grand travel experiment.  In the 1920s, people still relied on railroads for transportation, but planes were beginning to attract attention. They were carrying the mail, and some pilots accepted a couple of “hitchhiking” passengers who rode on the mail bags.

As planes became larger, there were still limitations based on light and weather. Planes needed daylight so pilots could see landmarks. Sometimes bad weather caused delay. And of course, planes could not yet carry enough fuel to fly cross country.

In 1928, financier Clement Melville Keys (1876-1952) had a new idea. He started a company called Transcontinental-Air-Transport and enlisted the help of Charles Lindbergh to create a transcontinental flight network. Keys knew the government paid well for airmail contracts. It was his plan to go after them using both planes and trains to move the mail.

Mail and Passengers

Based on the planes in use, Keys began offering passenger service as well. He worked with several different railroads to string together a route. Passengers could leave New York from Pennsylvania railroad station, traveling to Columbus, Ohio. In Columbus, they would transfer to a plane flying to Waynoka, Oklahoma, arriving in the late afternoon.

After a meal at a Harvey House restaurant, the passengers next boarded a Santa Fe train where they enjoyed sleeping car comfort arriving in Clovis, New Mexico, in the morning. After breakfast in the dining car, they disembarked from the train and transferred to another flight that flew the rest of the way to Los Angeles.

American travelers could go from the East Coast to the West Coast in 48 hours—a record for that time.  The ads for the service promised that customers could “fly by day and ride the rails at night.”

Transcontinental-Air-Transport later merged with Western Air Express to become TWA.

Business Slowdown

The Depression in the 1930’s, brought a slowdown in business across the country including a steep drop in train travel. Many Harvey House stops closed and/or staffing was reduced.

By the late 1930’s, the rumblings of war were heard, and it appeared that train service would be badly needed then, both for supplies criss-crossing the country as well as for personnel.

The soldiers and military personnel needed to be fed, so many of the Harvey locations reopened. This time there were no white tablecloths or good dishes and silver. Fred Harvey set up cafeteria-style dining to feed as many people as possible. Later on, the country began transporting prisoners to different locations within the United States, and these trains, too, stopped at Harvey House locations where big “mess tents” were set up to feed many people.

Son Continues the Business

When Fred Harvey died of intestinal cancer in 1901, he left a major business consisting of 47 restaurants, 15 hotels, and 30 dining cars that they operated on the Santa Fe in 12 states. He had two people in place who were well-prepared to take over. David Benjamin, a former bank teller that Fred Harvey admired, joined the business and moved up through management. In addition, one of his sons, Ford Harvey was also interested in the business, too. 

While Fred Harvey’s will specified that no changes were to take place immediately upon his death, Benjamin and Ford Harvey had been part of management for long enough to know the course of the business. As they observed the changes in train travel, they saw that other rail routes would be important. They opened big operations at major train hubs including Chicago, San Diego, and Los Angeles. They also moved in wherever they saw an opportunity, including the airport in Albuquerque.

Looking Forward

For many years, the Grand Canyon hotels owned by both the Santa Fe as well as Fred Harvey had continued to attract tourists and do well. When the Atchison, Topeka, and Santa Fe needed cash in the 1950s, they sold their interest in the hotels to the Fred Harvey Company. Of those hotels the El Tovar still operates and is always full.

Fred Harvey also moved into the national parks. Parks wanted visitors, and visitors wanted food, bathrooms, and tourist shops. Fred Harvey could handle all those. They also took over the services along the Illinois Tollway and ran those for 15 years.

The Fred Harvey Company was an important part of opening and civilizing the West. His company offered job opportunities to women who would never have dreamed of creating their own lives.  In the process he helped bring to prominence the culture and beauty of the Southwest.   

The Harvey Trading Company was acquired by the Xanterra Travel Company in 1969.

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Thanks to Alex Schneider, a railroad afficionado, who answered my questions when I couldn’t nail down answers elsewhere.

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